Written By Krishna on Friday, December 14, 2012 | 3:12 AM

Proposal for Cabinet
Committee on Investment (CCI) linked to
funds envisaged in Companies Act and new Companies Bill

CCI will unleash terror of environmental diseases by
handing over environment for electoral finance to ‘wolves’

New Delhi/14/12/2012: Electoral finance driven endorsement
to a Cabinet Committee on Investment (CCI) headed by the Prime Minister to fast
track projects above Rs 1,000 crore. The proposed CCI is situated in the
Companies Act, 1956 and the proposed Companies Bill 2011 which provides
corporate funding of political parties since 2002 amidst manifest collusion
between the BJP and the Congress and their allies. A paper on 'Politics of Funding of Elections and Electoral Reform' published in Think India Quarterly is attached.

From the very outset, Ministry of environment & forests
has consistently been kept structurally weak now the premature obituary of the
ministry is being authored by the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister in
lieu of electoral finance for the upcoming parliamentary elections for which
parties have started declaring their candidates.

The deafening silence of almost the entire opposition party
and members of United Progressive Alliance despite the protest by citizen
groups even in the face of CCI proposal reveals the impact of electoral finance
in dictating creation of docile investor friendly institutions that favor
ungovernable business enterprises seemingly beyond legislative will. If their
silence is viewed in the context of provision for corporate funding to
political parties in the form of 5 % of annual profit to companies under the
Companies Act, 1956 (amended in 2003) and 7.5 % of annual profit to companies
under the proposed Companies Bill, 2011 (recommended by Parliamentary Standing
Committee on Finance), it does not appear surprising. The Bill also provides
for contributions to NGOs. The purchased silence of a large number of NGOs in
this regard is not inexplicable either.

The proposal of CCI is pregnant with hitherto
unacknowledged terror of environmental diseases. While efforts are on to
monetize natural resources, it does not internalize the cost of
inter-generational and intra-generational adverse health impacts. The CCI is reportedly
expected to substitute the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) to ensure
expeditious approval if timelines are not adhered to.’

This is contrary to globally acknowledged preventive route
to reverse the trend of mortality and morbidity as has been confirmed by World
Health Organisation (WHO)’s Global Burden of Disease project which has
underlined that one-quarter of the global disease burden, and more than
one-third of the burden among children is due to modifiable environmental
factors.

Even a conservative National Environment Policy, 2006
revealed, “It is increasingly evident that poor environmental quality has
adversely affected human health. Environmental factors are estimated as being
responsible in some cases for nearly 20 percent of the burden of disease in
India.” When country’s environmental health infrastructure is almost
non-existent and admittedly public health system has collapsed, CCI proposal is
an invitation for public health disaster.

The proposal for CCI to clear large projects has stirred
opposition, including from within the government.

While the current Finance Minister and the Prime Minister
will be remembered in the history as the most environmentally destructive
individuals, the collusion of almost the entire political class and the so
called voluntary organizations (who have been volunteered by corporate
donations) will remain enshrined as an act of collaboration with terrorist
activities against the ecosystem and the elements that constitute the
substratum of human and non-human living existence. When billions of hazardous
wastes and thousands of kilometers of ‘mined’ land is abandoned with impunity,
it is not an exaggeration to refer to such acts of ‘development processes as
developmental terrorism. CCI is an act of subordinating health and ecosystem of
Indian to 2008 National Mineral Policy, 2008 in particular which advocates a
regime of self-regulation.

It is increasingly becoming clearer that CCI like proposals
are artifacts of investors in electoral finance. The proposal of CCI is an act
that envisages devouring the present and future generations of Indians and
their ecosystem.

The structural dependence of ministries environment and
forests and tribal affairs on Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs makes their
opposition a pro forma act. Given the fact that a junior environment and
forests ministry and under a junior minister gives clearance to some 100
projects every month and some 25 of its officials are supposed to monitor compliance
of environmental clearance conditions for over 6,000 projects which have been
accorded clearance, its formal opposition does not inspire even an iota of
confidence.

It is clear that India’s ecosystem is all set to be handed
over to wolves. Forewarning future democracies, Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd President
of the USA said, “Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and keep alive
their attention…If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and
I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves.”
Jefferson was one of the Founding Fathers of USA and the principal author of
the Declaration of Independence of USA.

If investors in electoral finance have not totally hollowed
out the legislative will as yet and legislators remain homo sapiens, the winter
session of the Parliament still can ensure that CCI does not see the light of
day. Failing which peoples’ movements will have to gear up to give the
proponents of despotic CCI a fitting reply in the 2014 elections.